He is Charming. Horrifying so. And possesses Phil Dunphy-worthy – Tigger-worthy – levels of enthusiasm. For Moleskine notebooks and people and birds and human-centred design and wizards and radical social reform.

For cheese.

He is breath-catchingly creatively gifted. Irritatingly free of artistic self-doubt. Stuffed to the very eyeballs with why-not-edness. He came pre-programmed for insane projects.

He leaves a wake behind him.

––

Gareth James Parry set out to make fifty two infographics in fifty two weeks largely because he is Gareth.

But he also set out to make fifty two infographics in fifty two weeks because of me.

Sometimes.

Sometimes.

A creative distraction

is a very sensible

strategy.

––

In 2012 I was sick.

I had been sick for a long time. Stuck year after year in a Groundhog Day of illness. My life narrowed to four brick walls and an orange tile roof.

Sick.

Stuck.

He’d seen all of it. The initial terror, the frantic diagnostics. The parade of failed treatments. The down and up and over and under – the endless, brutal, rollercoastering.

He’d witnessed my pain, and held his own quietly.

Eleven years.

On and on and on.

So, in the hours while I slept, he began to craft for himself fifty two distractions.

I watched as he researched, sketched, built, and blogged. As he replied to actual real live fans, and lost sleep, and swore at Illustrator. As he hit creative walls, and failed concepts, and then became suddenly – and inexplicably – entirely enthusiastic all over again.

I offered – a graphic designer in percale prison – what I could. Swatch book consultations. Line length amendments. Proportion adjustments and composition tweaks.

We visualised polluted waterways, made wall-sized sticker charts, and helped a Nelson-based greengrocer sell potatoes. We were published by Oxford University Press.

We worked with politicians, a Texan coffee shop, and a Taiwanese Sausage museum. We made live sketchnotes at TEDxWellington, crafted piechart-print cardboard couture, and executed ill-advised ideas spectacularly.

We exhibited. We collaborated. We basked.

We also face-planted.

I sobbed in the car. There were clients that didn’t pay. Marital shouting matches. And some wholly excruciating lessons in the value of contingency.

But early, we met The Extraordinary Women. They snatched us up and held us tightly in their community of creative ones.

Without them we would not be here, and I would not be writing this. Again and again they strong-armed me out of doubt.

Yup. Ya can.

*Shove*

––

The Infographers.

I cannot imagine a better vehicle for re-learning to live.

––

We are now four years into Life 2.0.

And our little business has done its job.

We release it.

New work is pulling us.

To everyone who came with us, thank you. All of you. The clients, the collaborators. The counsellors, the commiserators, the cheerleaders.

Those who made platforms. Those who opened doors. Those who knew and stood in fierce support. Those who have offered friendships vast and vulnerable.

I am standing, dithering – all gluttonous overwhelm, all heart-eyes emojis. Shelves and shelves of chocolate at Galeries Lafayette. A man – fifties, statement glasses, woollen jersey tossed over his shoulders – leans past me, and selects a bar. Places it in his basket.

He turns. Twinkly co-conspirator eyes.

(Something in French.)

Oh, pardon Monsieur! Je ne parle pas Française!

Oh!

English?

I nod.

This – (he pauses, waves his hands over the bars with art nouveau logos – bars wrapped in white, pink, yellow) – is some of the very best chocolate in all of France. He tells me he loves it.

Delighted, laughing, I ask him to show me his favourite.

He makes an agonised face.

Non! I can’t! ALL is wonderful!

I select two bars of Chocolat Bonnat – Hacienda El Rosario, Vale do Juliana. Chocolat Noir 75% de cacao. I pay a bobbed-haired woman eating sugared almonds and say goodbye to the tiny jars of mustard, the finely embellished tins of tea. I ride the escalator down, exit the gloss of the glass doors.

Back down to the gulls and the salt and the masts of the yachts.

Le Vieux Port de Marseille.

–

Marseille is beautiful. The port – the gulls and the salt and the masts of the yachts – are wrapped by the curved stone walls of old forts, striped cathedrals on hills, terracotta roof tops, macaron-coloured shutters. Soft rosy-peach mediterranean light.

Within this reeling, queues become instructed deep breaths. Enforced – and most welcome – respites.

–

This morning, we are queueing to the sound of sibilant scrunching. To the sound of one thousand shoes on sand on pavers. Brushes on snare drums. To the sound of pigeons and children. And to the roaring twenties which arrive, disappear, arrive again – the trail of a band from a bridge well behind us. Piano accordion, double bass, guitar. Plucked violin.

We are a multi-lingual snake of backpacks and down jackets and impatient sighs, watched from above by a gallery of kings. A defence of winged beasts.

Behind him, a young woman. She has a gentle, somber face – it’s tilted up towards her partner. Enormous dark-brown eyes. She speaks french. She is wearing a softly draped blanket scarf and a coral-red jacket.

Here, the air smells of sweet dough and perfume and cigarettes. Of the cold earth of the gardens and wet leaves and wet sand. Of exhaust. And yes, oui.

Faintly of dog shit.

–

Backpack-down-jacket snake brings us to burgundy doors with black iron flourishes. Our bags are checked. And we step into the cathedral.

Notre Dame is dark. Scented by paraffin wax.

Lillies.

And.

Oh.

Ever so often, I come across a place that – I don’t know – opens something inside me that is usually shut. These buildings, these pieces of land, have an almost unbearably heavy immaterial – something. Beauty. Significance.

I don’t know.

Unpredictable.

One grand palace, one finely crafted cathedral, one simple chapel. Nothing. Then another – and the exquisite weightiness descends.

So, cursing twelve hour time-zone changes, we get up. Make tea. Sit at the dining room table over the blue light of our laptops.

Paris.

Our apartment is above a little cobbled lane in the 3rd Arrondissement. Rue Charlot. A deep-turquoise glass and iron door. Barred into starbursts.

Admitting. Releasing. Gently latching behind for almost two hundred years.

On one side is an epicerie. (Fine salmon, caviar.) On the other, a cafe. Locals spill onto the street in smoke-wreathed clusters.

Our host, Philippe, arrives – silver-haired, sparkly-eyed, deliciously-accented. He bends down and fits an old key into the shin-height lock. Non-non-non! He removes my suitcase from my hand – and together the three of us climb five flights of winding wooden stairs. Oak cream pistachio-green.

Upstairs, through a soft green door, we discover – lucky lucky lucky – we have won AirBnB roulette.

The white panelled wooden windows are open to crisp autumn air and the sounds of the street.

–

By 7am, we’ve been up for four hours. Outside it's dark. It will remain so for some time. But we have written and retouched and proofread and selected and published and shared. Breakfasted and showered. Packed for the day.

We are pacing. Impatient.

We descend the stairs. Carefully – by cell-phone torchlight.

(Where is the light switch?)

Watching our footfalls.

Watching low ceilings that threaten our foreheads.

We latch turquoise-starburst behind us and step into the street. Cold sharp clear. I wrap my scarf tighter, push gloved hands into pockets, and huff white clouds into the pre-dawn dark.

Sneakers on cobbles.

Lanes lit with the soft yellow of street lights.

Empty.

The moon is a half circle.

Sleeping cities enchant me.

We walk to a minimalist soundscape. The sound of water running in gutters. Broom bristles on sidewalks. The unstacking of chairs onto pavement. The easy idling of delivery trucks.

We walk and walk and walk in the dark. Through lanes and alleys and squares and gardens and markets. We walk and walk. Silently. Reverently. Then excitedly chattering. Look! Look! Oh-my-god look! We walk tearing large greedy mouthfuls from small paper bags. Croissants. Rich spiced crusted bread – figs, almonds, raisins.

My footsteps become a chant of astonishment. I-am-here-doing-this-I-am-here-doing-this.

Streets stacked with sitcoms and fairytales. Victorian fantasies in five seven eight twelve colours of paint. Shingles and columns and fretwork and moulding and gables and gargoyles and gold leaf. Rounded bay windows.

We heft our bags through two sets of heavy wrought iron doors, and find ourselves in the half-light of a stairwell. It smells of ancient spices, dirt. Something sweet and rotten.

The floor is covered in cracked terracotta tiles.

The ancient elevator does not come to our call, so we shoulder our luggage and hike five flights of once-were-green carpeted stairs. Past broken windows, and rotten skirting boards, and scuffed grey-beige stucco walls, and corridor corners cataloging one hundred years of city dust.

This year I am taking part in the Leadership New Zealand programme, and recently I was asked to capture the mid-point of The Whole Thing. On a page. In actual sense-making syllables. Even though it’s all so very…

My boarding call is in five minutes, but we are snatching one last conversation from the weekend. We look at each other. Trying to make sense of the last three days.

Did you… I feel so… Do you think…

I had been warned. Sparkly-eyed, you’ll-see, gleefully warned by those who had been here before me. Leadership New Zealand? Oh! Ha! Hold on tight!

I have. Tight tight tight. Tight through the imposter-syndrome phase. Tight through the oh-holy-shit-what-have-I-done phase. Phases. Tight through the sessions well over my head. Tight through the painful insights, and the joy, and the requests to expand. Again.

Tight through the realisation (first retreat, first day, three hours in) that I am going to cry a LOT in front of these people.

Tight.

White-knuckled and curious. Testing my grip strength. Holding on through the ground-shifting intensity of it all.

Half way, now.

Christchurch. Hanmer.

I was welcomed by the stones of Ngā Whāriki Manaaki. I walked, heavily, to ruined cathedrals. Lightly, to spiral-slided playgrounds. I advocated for a dying lake to an extraterrestrial judge. And snort-laughed at crepe-paper theatrics.

I sucked in perfect Hanmer air, and Instagrammed perfect Hanmer landscapes. I watched a man unearth a latent gift for poetry.

I sat, bark pressing through my coat. Pines. Wet grass. Back-lit seed heads. Bight red berries on bare grey stalks. A creek singing over stones. I was greeted by a small black Lab with a flailing tail. He pushed his nose into my calf. Hello.

I talked to trees.

I breathed in for four. Held for seven. Out for eight.

I saw yet another way I have been blinkered. Ow. I cried. I ate peanut-butter bliss balls and went to bed early.

I tip my days up, shake them by the ankles, and masses of you – legions of you – fall out in a beautiful heap.

There. There is the one that txts me odes to avocados. And innuendo that makes me laughcry in public.

And her? She parents with astonishing patience. Humour. And only a little wine.

I am in awe of her.

Those two? Well.Those two rewrote, through sheer force of love, the narrative arc for one small human.

His memoir will be an entirely different book, now.

She has the most extraordinary soul.

She climbs down and meets me in the dark places.

She does things – terrible wonderful things – with sugar. Things that will yank you, with closed eyes, right into the moment.

Those four? They trust me with their failures. They have made me well in a way I didn’t know I could be.

That one trails pixie dust in her wake. She has a divining rod for determining I need to laugh.

She knows that climbing hills is a prayer of thanks. And comes with me – reverently, ritualistically – to offer a Life 2.0 tithe at the tills of Lululemon.

Those three. God. Those three. They offer nourishment. They fatten me up on dorky dancing, 80’s movies, beach walks, stick-on moustaches, and cheese – then gently turn me around, send me back out into the world. Full.

And them?

Oh, you know. They’re just changing the world. Using their voices. Standing their ground. Showing up and refusing to move.

That lot cheer shaky steps forward – wheeling out the brass band, the pom-poms, the banners. All of it. Every single time.

They are ferociously inclusive. This one knows that vulnerability is power. And she is afraid but is doing it anyway.

Outside, Auckland’s summer was thundering into black puddles. My dress was damp from the walk, and the bar roof leaked – sending droplets onto my nose, the table, the floor.

My friend and I were leaning close, yelling – trying to hear each other over the rain, the big screens, the sports team getting wasted behind us.

But sanctuary arrived anyway.

We talked about fear. About holding ourselves back. About ideas that are calling to us – intensely – while we, wide-eyed with panic, stay rooted to the spot. Caught up in mental tumbling. The what-if-it-fails-what-if-it-is-a-waste-of-time-what-if-I-should-be-doing-something-else-what-if-everyone-hates-it-what-if-everyone-hates-me.

What if no-one even notices.

We talked about being afraid to use our voices. And the insanity of comparing ourselves to those, who, in all honesty, have lives we don’t even want.

We talked about how hard it can be to own our power. To let it be enough. Let it be different to others'.

We paused. The roaring behind us had escalated. I squashed the lime in my glass with the end of a straw, and watched red-faced rugby guy do another nostril shot.

That night, I gave the advice I most need to give myself: that all that plunging and rolling around – that self-doubt – not only hurts us, but it is a disservice to the people we could be helping if we just quit the drama, told fear to pipe down, and gently but purposefully got the fuck on with it.

I gave the advice I most need to give myself: Do it. Please don’t hold yourself back. We need what you have to offer.

That night, I found sanctuary in being reminded. Women that I admire – women who make wonderful things and who impact the world in wonderful ways – trip up over the very same things that I do.

This state arrives whenever I am Trying To Be Impressive. It arrives, too, when individuals are presented as archetypes. With listening to nothing-ever-went-wrong-edness. It arrives in the void left by missing admissions of rough-edges, dead-ends, failure. Honesty.

This was a year of podiums. Of microphones. Of large screens and Keynote. Of placing an if-everything-goes-belly-up printed copy of my speaker notes on the floor by my feet. While my hands shook. My voice. The year of telling audiences things I once couldn’t tell myself.

A year of monumental vulnerability hangovers.

A year of failing. Painfully. Visibly. A yearlong required reading in failure first aid. And of re-learning again and again and again this: what I label – wrecked, facedown, cheeks blazing – as an horrific failure will often later shift to seem like something else entirely. Exactly what needed to happen. Getting taught what I needed to learn (again). A camouflaged stroke of good fortune. Not-so-subtle guidance.

This was a year of blue eyeshadow. Of Marty McFly marathons in striped hot-pink blusher, off-the-shoulder neon, and ripped stonewash booty shorts – of quite-a-lot-closer-to-god hair. A year of deadlifts and squats, packs and boots and blisters the size of small eggs. Tambourine-induced injuries. Ballgowns and joy-riding in Teslas. The pure sweaty joy of dancing in the dark in a room full of strangers. Of pohutukawa-lined beaches found at the end of clay goat tracks. And scraped shins. And feasting on ALL the foods because I CAN.

A year of Scheduling the Awesome. (Try it, it changes everything.)

A year flooded with new friends, and the kind of conversations so breathtakingly real they halt time. Of learning to deeply trust This Feels Important. Of starting to figure out what the heck self-empathy is, and why it matters. Of opening. Of changing my mind.

A year of discovering that setting the intention courage is an excellent way to ensure you will feel terrified and grateful in fairly equal measure. And that you will cry. A lot. From fear, from joy, from the overwhelming everythingness that shows up when you try to be brave with your life.

One more year, and my favourite of the three, to delight in what it is like to be well. Whole.

Six of us. Creative entrepreneurs, service designers, social innovators. Colleagues and collaborators. Mutual admirers. We first came together for a six week course – hoping to learn practices that could improve our own work, and improve outcomes for those we worked with. We explored how we might better support young social entrepreneurs – those bravely setting out to redefine business as a force for good. We threw ourselves into our research, and soon a theme started making itself known.

Failure.

The fear of it, the shame surrounding it, an unmet need to talk about it.

Then, as quickly as it started, our course ended. And our group shifted shape.

Into Fail Club.

We meet monthly over breakfast. We fling our bags on the floor and our coats over the chairs, hug each other tightly and exchange a flurry of greetings. We exclaim over fabulous shoes, great reads, weekend adventures, and swap quick professional state-of-the-nations. Then, over eggs and perfect crispy-edged hash browns, the cafe hum our soundtrack, we talk about our failures. Personal. Professional. Spectacular, subtle, painful.

We abandoned our original intended audience and made our own support group.

We laugh at ourselves a lot. Shared in such a safe space, our failures often seem hilarious. We all make such entertaining mistakes, form such lousy assumptions, and run so very enthusiastically with such deluded beliefs. On those mornings, I wipe tears of laughter from under my eyes and try not to spit green tea in an outburst of joy.

And then other mornings someone shares a failure so heart-wrenching that for a moment all the air in the room evaporates and we just sit. Quietly. In joint reverence of the fragility of being human.

We share shake-it-off strategies, resilience-building activities, and failure dissection tips. We dig into the failures behind the failures – yikes, it’s messy down there. We observe ongoing patterns of failure – failing to put our wellbeing first, failing to notice we are falling into unhelpful beliefs, failing to call ourselves on our own bullshit.

Failing to prioritise the stuff that actually matters.

We’ve met monthly for almost two years, now. And we have realised something.

This isn’t really about failure. This isn’t just an exercise in embracing failure. Trying to fail more or better. Faster.

We’ve fallen, entirely by accident, into something so much bigger.

Fail Club is about empathy. It’s about extending empathy towards our own failures and towards the failures of others. It’s about kindness. It’s about compassion. It’s about making space in the turmoil of everything, all of it, to notice.

It is a glimpse into the whole imperfect worlds of others – a gift in this glossy, social media-ready, carefully curated, cultural bubble that we live in. It’s about letting ourselves be seen.It’s about our humanness.

We meet. We spread our failures out, gently, between the teacups. And we have those rare, vulnerable conversations that offer so much sanctuary.

Once a month, a group of eight wholehearted ones squash into our shoebox of a living room. On the sofa, on the uncomfortable and rickety bought-cos-they-looked-cute wooden dining room chairs, on cushions on the floor. The Herbal Tea Collection – (Seriously, how are there so many? Are they breeding in the cupboard?) – is unearthed and paraded across the kitchen bench. A cup of Hot Cinnamon Sunset tastes like hot cross buns and heaven. We eat fat and refined sugar interspersed with carrot sticks and hummus, and have the kind of conversations that break you open while healing you up.

Raucous gales of laughter. Pin-drop quiet. Our sessions are sacred but swear-ridden. And today someone reveals she woke up still drunk. It’s Tuesday.

This for me is church.

Tonight: The Desire Map, Chapter One. Discussion: What would happen if we made all our decisions based on feeling good?

Or. Profound self awareness. An ability to be wholly present. An intuitive balancing of short and long term feels-awesome’s. People who are so filled up that they can’t help but give the very best of themselves to others. A radically different world.

Joy as our currency.

Next: Do we push away good feelings?

Yes.

Why?

A flood of reasons. Top of the list: Busy. Horrible, toxic Busy. We believe we are just too damned busy. We believe we need to get to the bottom of the to-do list before we can feel good. We believe we need to earn it. We believe we don’t have time to stop and notice and soak in it. We convince ourselves that we will feel good once we’ve done this and this and this. Or maybe we’ve just become so flustered and harried and over scheduled to even notice the good feelings anymore. We’ve taught ourselves that, right now, feeling good is just not a priority.

We feel unworthy. I haven’t done enough. I’m not enough. We believe feeling good lies with an as yet un-obtained thing, moment, goal. We’re so busy with our pasts, our futures, that present joy doesn’t get a look in. We believe that because everything isn’t perfect, this moment can’t be perfect. We believe that if we truly let ourselves feel how wonderful something is – let it sweep over and through us – that we are just asking for it to be taken away. Leaving ourselves wide open for a bitch slap from Murphy’s Law. For The Unimaginably Bad Thing, waiting, hidden in the wings, to storm in.

We believe – on some level – that feeling good is unimportant, selfish, shallow.

Last year we found a tiny sanctuary, and today we have returned. I am sitting on a white wooden deck chair, a pillow behind my back. My legs are wrapped in a blanket. Beside me is ginger tea in a china teapot, macarons made by our host, dark chocolate, and black grapes – real ones – sharp, complex, gelatinous – not those supermarket orbs which taste of nothing but vacant sweetness. The gentle heat of autumn sun. Salty air. My book has been abandoned and lies upside down on the arm of the chair – and I am feasting greedily on the view. We are high on a hill overlooking the endless, wild, Muriwai coastline – ensconced in the thoughtful, quiet luxury of our suite at 216. I want to stay forever.

A celebration brought us here, and brings us back one year later – our wedding anniversary. I’m actually a bit mad at myself for not Scheduling This Awesome sooner, because these weekends – agenda-free, chore-free, just-us pockets of unashamed spoiling should not be saved up for just once a year. We loved this place. And we left, after just two nights, feeling whole, expansive, united. Why didn’t we come back sooner? I can’t remember any reason that seems remotely sensible.

We talk – rather than just swap to-dos and calendar dates and work stories. We sit still for long stretches of time – only getting up to make more tea, find some other delightful thing to eat. Sometimes we read to a soundtrack of birds and cicadas and shivering flax. Sometimes we just stare – chins lifted – soaking in the spectacle of the changing coast. The restless clouds, the tiny black ant-people in the distance, the salt spray that lifts and descends – obscuring and revealing the horizon. I notice things – the weight and texture of the blanket on my knees, how the wool radiates heat right through to my skin as the sun hits us, the waxeyes feeding on the flax flowers, the feeling of profound nourishment that can sweep through you from just a few deep lungfuls of clean air.

When we venture out, we take long slow walks on Muriwai’s black sands – watching dogs, grinning, rush in and out of the shallows, and kite surfers fly past us on the gloss between breakers. We wade into knee-high piles of sea foam washed up at Maori Bay, and watch the frothy beads, caught by the wind, skitter along the shoreline. We eat, twice, at Provenance – lazily, papers spread over the table. People watching over the rim of my cup.

This weekend we also work. It’s unavoidable this time – but somehow, here, the tasks assume an ease. Keep their perspective. We tick things off without dithering and second guessing, then head back to the deck, those chairs, that pot of tea. Place our feet, one in front of the other, across the coolness of the wet sand. Let the powerful Tasman Sea suck against our ankles.

Last year G and I found our chats over dinner, dishes, and stuck-in-traffic moments were often wandering to the same place. We kept returning to a soft ache – for idleness, for quiet, for space. He talked about working towards selling everything and moving to Nowhere. How it would feel to live simply and lightly surrounded by bush, by sea, by sky. We talked about trips, remote spots to stay, and long hikes with soaring scenery. I imagined wilderness, silence, just-us-ness. Deep lungfuls of air that smelled of pine needles and salt. But in all the well-worn conversational tracks, we always seemed to imagine that true restoration, for us, was to be found at a place. A remote, wild, uncomplicated place – miles from traffic and people and cell-phone coverage. We envisaged a beautiful cabin. Fantasised about star-lit nights and slow unscheduled days.

I still badly want to make this place.

But we also love our lives here in the city. And our weekends, while often chore-laden, are rich with friends and fun. So something nagged at us – how often would we actually make it this place? Once a month? Once every two? And the cost. With the necessity of paying guests would our quiet place simply become another chore to be attended to? For us at least, ceasing to be what we had intended?

And I was curious. Did others feel this need for sanctuary? How did they create moments that sustained them? I interviewed friends and colleauges and acquaintances – tell me about your day to day life, tell me about your last holiday, tell me about the stuff that makes you feel drained. And then: tell me about the things in your life that help you feel vibrant, whole, resilient.

We talked about exercise – not-negotiable daily yoga practice, paddle-boarding sessions scheduled between meetings, 5am walks. Prioritising time to be by ourselves versus feeling amazing because we have spent time with our friends. Holidays were divisive: Wholly necessary, or a logistical and financial luxury? Restorative long beyond the actual time away (anticipating, reliving)? Or a fleeting, feel-good blip – the benefit of which is seriously undone by the schedule stress prior and post. We talked about the nourishing practice of finding pleasure – flowers on the counter, a scented candle burning, a bed with fine sheets, a delicious treat. A moment each evening sitting on the deck looking out to sea. We talked about how sometimes, sometimes, all that we can think of to prop ourselves back up again after a total shit-storm of a day is an evening of indescribably bad TV. Several glasses of wine. A mountain of whatever chocolatey junk can be ferreted out from the depths of the kitchen cupboards. And in that moment, that’s exactly what we need. But how, at other times, being disciplined, and intentional, and self-reflective is how we create nourishment – how we build pockets of sanctuary into our lives, and fortify ourselves with resilience.

And I realised, high on connectedness, that restoration is a Thing – a big, complex, multi-faceted Thing. What renews me, might make you feel lonely. That weekend road trip with no fixed destination, which makes you feel bulletproof again, may make me so anxious I bury my fingernails into my flesh and ask on repeat when we can stop for a cup of tea and a lie down. What gives us sanctuary today may be the exact opposite of what we need tomorrow. How being delighted by the one or two or three times a year we get to leave home and take a holiday is not enough. That we can feel restored everyday – by a place, by a person, by a thing, by a moment.

Chaotic rainbows are being flung across the gravel of the Routeburn shelter carpark – clothes, packs, hiking poles, supermarket bags, raincoats. Twenty four of us are setting out to walk the Grand Traverse – the Routeburn and Greenstone tracks – over 5 days and 76km. There is a frenzy of final preparation. Sunscreen, insect repellant. Last minute toe strapping. Boots being laced tighter, packs adjusted. A parade of loo trips. We share slightly nervous conversations about sock choices, hikers wool versus blister pads, water bottles and Camelbacks. There are scurrying efforts to find sunhats carefully stowed somewhere that no longer seems obvious. The group’s food is divided up and we stash our share under stern instructions. Do not squash the bread.

This is my first Great Walk, and I am lurching between excitement and fear. I’m also feeling seriously sleep deprived, thanks to the drunk dudes at the Glenorchy Hotel. We were treated to a nocturnal symphony of their hollering and crashing backwards and forwards between the bar and bathrooms – the crescendo of which occurred at about 3am when one of their troupe walked up and down the hall, hammering on every door in turn, yelling ‘Oi! Mark! Lemme in!’. Over breakfast, my sister is still furious. She reveals she stood, all 5ft 4" of her, just behind the door to her room, consumed with the white-hot rage of the sleepless. Fists clenched, ready to go out and crack some heads. My brother in law only just managed to keep her contained.

And then, packs re-stuffed, briefed and readied, we are walking.

We talk many times over the next few days about how remarkable all this is – to have nothing demanded of you except that you walk. One foot then the other. Some footfalls are blissful, some are miserable, but now I get it. To just walk, for days on end, is joyfully liberating. There are no other demands on your time – those thousand daily insistent claims for my attention have vanished. Middle Of Nowhere. Uncontactable. Only Way Out By Foot. Even four days in, limping along with a blister the size of a quail egg, this offers a kind of sanctuary.

Our feet lead us through beech forests, rich with the smell of leaf litter and earth. Then wild alpine landscapes – soaring peaks, snow. We look down on braided rivers, silver with light. Ochre flatlands of grass and tussock. Waterfalls that cut soft swathes of white through deep olive green scrub. Flaxes. Hebes. There are tiny, tiny, daisies smaller than the head of a pin, and impossibly delicate mosses. They’re so small they are only noticeable during breaks – sitting on a rock, pack off – or when I’m reduced to climbing, hands grasping for grip, on the rocky ascents up Conical Hill or Paddy’s Point. There is some kind of plant that looks like a little blanket quilted from green hexagons. Tiny red berries. An entire world in miniature.

The dramatic landscape is, one morning, softened by fog – moody drifts sweep in around the sharp angles of the rocks, and obscure the jagged edges of the mountains. It is a haunting beauty made for grainy photographs or time-lapse film. And then, swiftly, the cloud is gone and we are back to endless views. Mountain range after range after range. On and on. Snowy peak to snowy peak. Valleys dotted with the gloss of alpine tarns. Turquoise streams. The white breakers of the coast a tiny blurry line on the horizon.

We walk and walk and walk – almost 100km in all. Physically we wear ourselves down, and each day my feet hurt more and more. My blisters gather in size and number. I lose more sleep in the snore-rattled huts, and the sandflies think I am delicious. I am bruised and filthy, I have a rash on my hips from the pack straps, and I’ve bashed up my shin somehow. There are moments when I would sorely love to throw down what my friend’s fiancé calls ‘The Princess Card’.

But moment by moment there is also sanctuary. There is restoration. That scenery. Those views. Holding in my hands a cup of tea boiled in a billy on the side of the track. Sitting on a rock, sun on my back, while I soak my feet in a glacier-fed lake. The camaraderie of a group, new friends, shared commiserations. The taste of a salami and cheese sandwich – which seems, at that moment, to be the very best thing I have ever eaten. Renewal is that moment each day when my pack comes off and I feel weightless. When my feet are released from their boots. Nourishment is the robins and riflemen that visit us as we walk. Resilient is how I feel when I emerge from an end-of-day alpine stream plunge – squealing, shivering, euphoric. The first hot shower in three days. I am CLEAN! Connectedness is the vivid, collective food fantasising – custard squares, raspberry buns, burgers and beer, please. Restoration is feeling of the tussock as it runs through my outstretched fingers.

It’s realising, pack sitting in the dust beside me as we wait for the shuttle bus, that I did it.

We meet our host, Jim Wheeler, and his tan Jeep at the beach carpark, and follow him inland in our tiny blue city-kids car. We drive through the Wheeler’s farm towards Lake Wainamu, and on through little freshwater streams to our refuge. Wainamu Luxury Tents. We park on the grass beside our gate and follow Jim around our campsite. I have the most enormous, totally uncontrollable dorky grin spread across my face, and am fighting fits of excited giggles. I want to drag everyone I know here and point – ‘Look! And the! Look at the thing! And this! Isn’t it! Wow!’ After Jim leaves, and is some safe distance away, there is much leaping about and high-fiving. Then a serious exploration and photographic documentation begins.

A wooden-floored, cream canvas tent so beautiful, so carefully made, and so thoughtfully bestowed with treasures I feel my chest tighten. A huge bed, covered in pillows and soft floral quilts. Sheepskin floor rugs. A jar of bright red dahlias on an upturned metal bucket. A sofa, woollen blankets, and crocheted throws. Lanterns to be lit. Home made muesli and bread to be devoured. An enamel bowl of farm eggs. Kiwiana tea-towels.

There is no sound but the breeze in the pines and the song of the birds that crisscross above our heads. We have an outdoor kitchen, a chest full of ice, a fire-pit with kindling already laid, and a jar full of marshmallows ready for toasting. We can cook over open fire, wood or gas BBQ, gas-ringed hob.

It is here, summer sun on our shoulders, that we plan our year. We make billy tea, serve it in pottery mugs, and sit on the tent porch surrounded by the smell of mānuka, grass, and canvas. What was wonderful about 2014? What sucked – comprehensively, marginally, whatever? How do we want to feel in 2015? And what things, people, places, and activities help us feel that way? The Post-It’s come out and we paper the floorboards of the tent with our revelations. Looking at the good, the great, and the mildly miserable laid out before us on fluoro squares, we can see patterns start to form. We are struck that without thoughtfulness and attention, the really delightful bits of life tend to disappear, and regular old stuff just expands to fill the gaps. And so we decide, with much hilarity, that our grand intention for the year is to Schedule The Awesome. (Emblazoned T-shirts, perky hashtags, and motivational speaking tour to follow.)

Our days are filled with wandering, resting, reading, eating. We meander down farm tracks, through streams, and stand, necks cricked back, to admire the towers of the dunes and their waves of black and gold sand. We watch kids leap, squealing, off a small jetty into the lake. We pause under pōhutukawas and listen to the noisy wings of Tūī, and walk along the coast – our feet in the foam of the surf, the dramatic landscape softened with drifts of salt spray.

Our cell-phones are lying lifeless somewhere in the car. And I feel wholly, expansively relaxed.

We eat feasts of food flavoured by wood smoke, drink west-coast wine, and watch the valley darken. We light lanterns and listen to the cast-iron bath fill with water. The darkness stops just beyond the flicker of our candles. Steam from the hottest water we can stand lifts itself above the rim of the tub and curls up. There is an almost inaudible chorus of tiny insect wings, and a smell of beeswax. Satellites arc across the starry ink above our heads. Even the birds are quiet.